


Nearest To My Heart

by luninosity



Series: Oh Boy! Or, Life's Better With A Buddy Holly Soundtrack [7]
Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Conversations, Cupcakes, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff With Emotions, Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-18 06:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael takes the role in <i>Frank</i>, in which no one will see his face; James worries about why, and bakes cupcakes. Domestic fluff, love, support.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nearest To My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> For [starlady38](http://starlady38.tumblr.com/), who wanted James’s and Michael’s reactions to Michael taking the role in Frank, in which no one will see his face, and who then quoted Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” at me: _and you know I’m yours/ and I know you’re mine/ and that’s for all of time/ ooh, I look just like Buddy Holly/ oh oh ,and you’re Mary Tyler Moore/ I don’t care what they say about us anyway/ I don’t care ’bout that…_
> 
> Title, opening, and closing lines from Buddy Holly’s “Umm Oh Yeah (Dearest)” this time; as ever, this whole series is based on requests, so feel free to ask!

 

  
_you may be a million miles away_   
_please believe me (umm yeah)_   
_when you hear me say_   
_I love you, I love you…_

  
Michael comes home under an opal-grey sky, on a chilly winter-bitten day, to the thick comforting scent of tomato sauce and cheese and meat, and the glow of all the lights in their flat flipped on, and the kindling warmth of James’s smile, glancing up brilliantly over the pages of his script.  
  
He sheds coat and scarf and icy weather, and walks across the few steps to the sofa and kisses tempting lips until James laughs into his mouth and both arms go around his neck, script forgotten. “Welcome home. How’d it go?”  
  
“Oh, excellent. Mostly preliminary discussions about, you know, health and safety concerns and me wearing a giant fibreglass head for hours on end while filming. And corresponding salary increases. Want a genuine Klingon bat’leth prop?”  
  
“Only always. Dinner?”  
  
“Yes dinner. The rest of the lasagna?”  
  
“You did say we ought to eat it.” James sticks a bookmark in his script, stretches; Michael kisses him again, helpless not to with that sweater slipping up and all those compact muscles on display. “Want a drink?”  
  
“Yes, but I’ll get it. And I’ll set the table. You stay put.”  
  
“I’ve been home all day—”  
  
“Which is why I should do some of this for you. My turn.” Tossed back over his shoulder as he wanders into the kitchen; a quick check on the oven, in which everything looks bubbly and crackly and molten with cheese, and that’s perfect, James isn’t allowed to try to cook real meals without him around but knows ovens very well and can reheat leftovers to perfection; opening the refrigerator to find two beers, except then he stops, and gazes at the contents, door open and heedlessly spilling all its cold out into the world.  
  
James made cupcakes. Made, and decorated, obviously humorously, each one fancifully sporting an X-Men logo or a Magneto helmet or a Spartan crest or a race car. And of course they’ll all be delicious. Everything James bakes, one-time confectioner’s apprentice to the core, is always delicious.  
  
But that’s not the point.  
  
The point is that James was baking without him, and Michael’s a bit sad, because he loves to watch those broad freckled hands at work, gorgeous paradox of strength and delicacy, tracing sugar-lace over gingerbread or cake-icing; he’s sad that James didn’t wait for him to come home, and he’s worried, because James didn’t wait for him. Didn’t offer to tease him with fingers coated in icing or slow deliberate lip-licking taste-tests.  
  
Didn’t tell him that something was wrong.  
  
He turns around, and James is of course behind him, kitten-quiet and rumpled-beautiful, hair standing up in all directions, hand having obviously just run through it.  
  
“You weren’t supposed to see those yet. They’re a surprise.”  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
“Me?” James blinks. “Yes. I just—oh, lasagna—”  
  
“It’ll be fine for five minutes. Talk to me.” He holds out his hands; James takes them without hesitation. Can’t be that bad, then. Or at least not his fault, not something he’s done or failed to do. “Please.”  
  
A sigh. “Come sit down?”  
  
“Of course.” He holds those expressive hands all the way to the sofa. They don’t let go of his, either. “Can you tell me?”  
  
“It’s really not about me.” James looks at their linked hands, tucking legs up underneath him on the cushions, looking impossibly young and earnest and lovely in the honeyed gleam of the lights, the coziness of their bookshelves. Mostly James’s books, on those shelves; Michael’s not a great reader, unless it’s research for a role, or unless he’s really passionately interested in the subject matter. But James is. James loves all the worlds of fantasy and science-fiction equally, Star Trek tie-in novels sitting proudly side-by-side with Neil Gaiman’s latest and a C.S. Lewis collector’s set.  
  
Michael’s read the books that James has handed him, offered with that irresistible enthusiastic smile, the one that pulls the whole world into its orbit and makes all the atoms get excited about literature too. He’s not quite sure he’ll ever understand poetry, but he’ll read it to try to see what James sees, what makes those tropical-summer eyes light up that way. And James smiles each time, when Michael mentions having liked a particular Pablo Neruda poem or a Tolkien tale.  
  
Like the birth of the sun over oceans. Every time, in that smile.  
  
He’s seen James not smiling, too. Trembling, in the icicle black of night. Stumbling terrified out of dreams. Out of those dreams.  
  
James has continued talking, eyes clear and bright and sincere, while he’s been caught in reverie. “…I only thought, this film, you taking on this project, you might—Michael? Have you been listening to me?”  
  
“Not exactly? Sorry. You’re very distracting.” He frees one hand and strokes a curl of irrepressible hair away from one blue eye, as an apology. James likes it when he does that, he knows.  
  
“Hmm. You’ll make it up to me later. I was saying, though…Michael…you know I love you.”  
  
“Yes? And I love you. You know that.”  
  
“Yes. And…you know this film. You. Playing this role…no one seeing your face…”  
  
“I knew that when I took the job, you remember.”  
  
“No, I know, it’s just…” James bites his lip. Then goes on, all in a rush: “This isn’t because of _Shame_ , is it, because of the—the way people focused on your body, on your—because it was a brilliant film, a genius film, you know it was, you know all the important people know it was, and this—you’re not doing this to prove some sort of point, are you, because you don’t need to, you’re fantastic, you’re an amazing actor, and—”  
  
“James.” He rests a finger over those mobile lips; James stops talking, and breathes, and looks at him, not exactly happily. “I…you know, give me a second, all right? Let me think about it.”  
  
James isn’t wrong. Not entirely, anyway. He can acknowledge that to himself. The relentless dick-jokes and scrutiny and well-meaning interview questions _have_ gotten old. He’s not embarrassed about being apparently divinely well-endowed—certainly James has always seemed to approve—or about being naked, physically or emotionally, on camera; he gives his all, every time, to a performance, and he’d believed in the script and in his director, and he’d made his choice and had committed.  
  
It had hurt, though. It still does. And maybe there’s a bit of that element in there, wanting to prove that he’s more than just Michael Fassbender’s penis, on screen. Wanting to test himself as an actor: can he do the same work, be just as good, when no one can see his expressions, his face?  
  
It is about proving himself. But that’s not all it is.  
  
Michael’s always been fairly good at knowing his own motivations, knowing what he wants, and why. And this particular moment of self-scrutiny tells him exactly what he knows about this role, and about why he’s chosen this one, at this point, out of the mountains of proposed projects that turn up at their shared door.  
  
“It’s a bit about that,” he admits, because that’s true. And it would be even more true if this were a role for James, whose sunny smile and boundless charm cover up an equally bottomless well of self-doubt and insecurity and shivering nightmare scenes. That’s no doubt why the question, why the worry. Why the baking.  
  
Reassurance. For the both of them.  
  
The lights glow, encouragingly, over their still-joined hands. Over his other hand, when he lets it slide down to cup James’s cheek, thumb rubbing gently over familiar freckle-patterns, pinwheels of nutmeg and gold.  
  
James looks up at him, and doesn’t blink, or pull away.  
  
“Only a bit,” he clarifies. “That’s part of it, yes. Wanting people to see me in a role that’s…about the role. Not about my…inches.”  
  
“I like all your inches.”  
  
“I know. But that’s not all of the reason. It genuinely is a good script, I’d not do it if it wasn’t, and the character is compelling, and you know I like the music, we already knew that, and the story…it’s a story that people should hear. That I’d want to hear. It should be told. I believe in the film. That’s the rest of why. Most of why. All right?”  
  
And, after a second, James nods.  
  
“Good. I mean—are we good, then? You, and me?”  
  
“I think so…” James turns his head, kisses Michael’s hand. “Dinner?”  
  
“Only if we’re all right.”  
  
“I…there’s one more thing. Little thing. Later. Okay?”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“Yes. Come on, dinner’s probably more than done, by now, and we can’t keep it waiting. It’ll be upset with us.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael says, “it will, will it,” but James kisses him as they get up, swift and certain as the haven of their flat, and so they are all right, at least for now.  
  
Much later, after the lasagna has been properly placated and the beer’s been consumed and they’re lying naked and sated and sweaty and content in the enormous bed with the blue silk sheets, he kisses the shell-curve of the closest ear. “Still awake?”  
  
“Mmm. Not very. That…you, with the finger, in that spot…”  
  
“Good?”  
  
“Extremely good. My turn to do that to you, next.”  
  
“Sounds fair. James?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“You said…earlier…you said there was one more thing…”  
  
“Oh.” James turns his head to look. The shadows spill and splash over his face, chiaroscuro of light and dark. When he blinks, the lampglow tangles in his eyelashes, where it doesn’t want to leave. “It’s only…you’ll think I’m being ridiculous, I know, but I can’t not…”  
  
“Just ask me. Anything.” He traces a heart, soft and a bit lopsided, over the flat plane of that pale stomach. “Please.”  
  
James laughs, in the evening coolness. “All right, well…I love you too, you know…you know you sometimes get very…you get very into character. Invested. Which I love, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always admired that about you, I was impressed by that about you for years…”  
  
“Years, you say?”  
  
“Yes, well, I did see _A Bear Named Winnie_ and _Centurion_ and _300_ and—hey! Stop that—”  
  
“You were about to mention _Jonah Hex_ , weren’t you?”  
  
“Maybe. And I know you’ve seen _Wanted_ , so you can’t comment. I was trying to say, though…this one…please don’t…I know it’ll be asking a lot. I’m sorry. Please just…don’t bring too much of it home. Don’t be—don’t be a man without a face. Be Michael. For me.”  
  
For a moment, caught out of time in the dimness and quiet of early night, he can’t reply.  
  
James hasn’t said why. But they both know. And he hears that first confession all over again: _I never see his face_ , that whisky-and-amber voice’d said, describing the nightmares. Scottish tartan and determined self-sufficiency belying the fear. _I never see his face, I only know he’s there, standing over me in bed, and if I move or scream or even breathe he’ll…_  
  
He’ll do what, Michael’d wanted to know.  
  
I never know, James’d said. I wake up.  
  
He’s seen the way James wakes up.  
  
He knows what James is asking for now.  
  
He reaches out. Puts his arms around those broad shoulders, fiercely, in the night. “I promise,” he says. “I promise, James. You and me. James and Michael, here.”  
  
And James breathes in, against his chest, not quite a sob or a gasp but some sound in between, the sound of comprehension, perhaps, or healing, or hope. “Thank you.”  
  
“Thank you. For asking.” He kisses James again, too, for good measure. “I’ll try. You know…” All of it. The characters, the immersion, the devotion to their craft. Another in the long list of reasons why they fit so well. They do both know.  
  
“I know. I’m sorry.”  
  
“No. Not ever. Just…remind me, if I need that, once in a while? Throw a pillow at me, or tell me I’m being an idiot, or something?”  
  
“Can I kiss you instead?” James tips his head up, finds Michael’s lips unerringly in the dark. “Like this?”  
  
“That ought to work, yes…” It will. This is James, kissing him. And James is his anchor. His home. His—everything.  
  
That doesn’t belong to the role. Not to any role. That belongs purely and inarguably and gloriously to them.  
  
Together.  
  
So it’ll work. Because he always wants to come home to James.  
  
“I love you,” James says, and puts his head back on Michael’s shoulder. “I made some with lemon-cream centers. The cupcakes, I mean. For you.”  
  
“You’re saying I should feed you dessert in bed, then? In a minute.” He presses his lips to that explosion of hair, to the top of James’s head, inhaling the scent of him, clean sharp sweat and apple shampoo and blue silk and lingering sugar from the baking. That last one’s likely only his imagination at this point, but he believes he can taste it regardless.  
  
“I left three undecorated,” James says, drowsily. “In the back. To finish later. Also for you.” Michael breathes in again and holds him close and whispers back, “I love you too.”

 

  
_come home, keep me from these sleepless nights_   
_try my love again (umm yeah)_   
_I'm gonna treat you right (umm yeah)_   
_I'm gonna treat you right_


End file.
